The changing scenario of use of the armed forces have recently imposed a comprehensive reconsideration of the tasks and equipment to be allocated to military operators in the operations settings and in particular the more widespread and effective use of high-caliber ammunition so as to allow high precision during combat and consequentially a high capacity of reducing enemy capability.
For this purpose, it became necessary to equip the military operator with a weapon system that includes not only a traditional hand-held weapon such as a rifle, but also a grenade launcher, which is coupled to the hand-held weapon to enable the operator to launch towards a moving target high-caliber ammunition, greater than or equal to approximately 40 mm, which as known, is indicated by the word “grenade”.
However, the use of weapon systems integrating a grenade launcher of the above-described type has had, to date, a relatively limited distribution because the probability of failure of striking a moving target by a single grenade was found to be quite high, and, therefore, not acceptable in war scenarios.
In fact, the probability of failure in hitting a moving target with a grenade launched from a weapon system of the type described above crucially depends on determining the correct shooting attitude to be given to a grenade launcher by the operator. Such an assessment has proven, however, to be extremely complex and, therefore, susceptible to errors as the operator must make, extremely quickly, especially in combat scenarios, a visual estimate of the distance from the moving target, a visual estimate of the angle of the site where the moving target is, and a determination of the shooting attitude to be given to the grenade launcher taking into account the movement of the target, the distance, the angle, and the trajectory of the grenade, which trajectory, as known, may prove to be particularly difficult to determine.
EP 0785 406 A2, which is incorporated by reference, relates to an improved method and device for aiming and firing a rifle-mounted grenade launcher without having to approximate the range of a target and then manually adjust the position of subsequently fired grenades. The grenadier initiates the process by pointing the grenade launcher at the stationary target. The range and azimuth of the stationary target are determined by a microprocessor-controlled laser range-finder/digital compass combination. A ballistic solution is calculated by the microprocessor and the superelevation required to place the grenade on a stationary target is displayed on one of several video displays.
Therefore, the use of weapon systems provided with hand-held grenade launchers of the above-described type has proven to be very inconvenient to date, as it involves a high localization risk of the military operator along with a low probability of striking a target with grenades.